Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor John Watson and all associated characters belong to the late, great Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his estate, various studios and other companies. This pastiche is completely non-profit, and only for enjoyment and entertainment.

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Chapter Two: Mr Sherlock Holmes

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Lauriston Gardens was just the kind of place rich people don't want to see; it reminded them of what happened when the money was all gone. The narrow but tall brick buildings set back from the street in a stubby laneway were once respectable and well ordered, but now were ground down by time and ravaged by lack of care. Rust and faded paint scaled down the walls that wild grasses and thistles climbed from below. Some desultory effort had been put into trying to mitigate the damage in the two houses on the tiny lane that were occupied, but people hadn't bought here with the idea towards improvement. The others had faded signs asking, against all probability, for someone to spend money on them.

This place was like Watson's hotel room. This was shelter. This wasn't home.

It was ringed with police cars and sedans with the lighting sets flashing. The morgue van was on it's way, and from the look of things they'd have to move cars to get it through the narrow lane. As it was Stamford had to park outside the lane entrance and they were forced to walk all the way down to number three.

Putting on foot covers was an interesting feat with one leg braced; it had taken three weeks with the occupational therapist to discover a method. He remembered hopping and falling about his hotel room, practising. As it was, it still takes over a minute to perform a function most can do in seconds. Watson tries not to let the eyes on him bother him.

He looked up in time to see the lead detectives gather everyone for a briefing. The man in charge was a short, lean, dark haired man with an almost nervy sort of energy which, combined with sharp, angular features gave him an almost ferret like air. Grimacing behind him was a larger, broader man; not fat, but built squarely, blonde and bearded neatly. Watson put them at mid-to-late thirties; both had detective badges clipped to their persons.

"Alright, listen up you lot," The ferrety man spoke over the crowd of technicians and constables with an unexpectedly powerful voice. "We've stepping into a pile of midden here. In that house, suspected but not confirmed, is a foreign national belonging to our cousins across the pond, America. I don't think I need to tell you they are not happy to hear about their citizens shuffling of the mortal coil far from home. As we speak the upper classes are getting ulcers from the US Consulate, and when they get ulcers they like to pass them around. So this scene has to be tighter than a miser's fist, understand? Everything you find, anything you find, gets bagged, checked in, and double marked, no exception."

The blonder man rolled his eyes. "If we let anything slip through our fingers on this, the lords will let us know in no uncertain terms; and if I have the person responsible for that in front of me, the Americans wrath with be a day at the seaside by the time I'm finished with them. You have your assignments, you know your jobs. Report anything strange to Lestrade or myself. Get moving, before the press descends."

The gaggles of blue spread out. The two medical examiners approached the Detective Inspectors, though warily. The two older men where having a fierce, sotto voce argument.

"I can't believe you called him in!" the blonder man hissed to his companion vehemently.

"I don't like it any more than you do, man, but by Gods, this is the kind of case that is going to be a mile of rough road! Of course I called him!" the man called Lestrade threw up his hands with resigned force. "Let him have his gloat, and then he can clean up this mess quickly and quietly with the minimum of fuss! The uppers don't care how we handle it, just so long as it's handled! Besides, have you any better suggestions, pray?"

"Now see here you..." the blonde man broke off as he realized he'd raised his voice, and there were two medicos standing before him trying not to look as if they were eavesdropping.

"Good morning Inspector," Stamford covered smoothly. "Care to direct us to our client?"

"Doctor," the blonde man nodded, before turning his eyes to Watson. "Doctors, sorry."

"My apologies; gentlemen, meet Doctor John Watson. He'll be my replacement, attached to homicide," Stamford clapped Watson on his good shoulder, for which he was thankful.

Watson was hit with a double stare of analysis for the two older men, and grimaced inside. He was going to have to get used to people dissecting his appearance if he was going to be working around detectives for a living.

The blonde man held out a square hand. "Detective Inspector Tobias Gregson, at your service. This is Detective Inspector Lestrade, my partner."

Lestrade proffered his own hand. "Temporarily, at least. You're the Doctor Watson that was mugged were you?"

Watson grimaced. "Yes, Inspector."

Lestrade sent him a measuring look, and Watson forced himself not to fidget. Lestrade gave a noncommittal grunt, and then gestured to the dusty stairs.

"Doctors, step this way; we need a definitive cause of death and a positive ID if possible; we're not quite sure how the victim ended up here, as this place is currently listed as unoccupied. No one has disturbed the body, but forensics has already done their sweep so everything is on record. Feel free to move things around, but try to keep track of what you move. He's upstairs."

So that was that. Watson felt glad they hadn't asked any probing questions. The detectives he'd met so far hadn't been able to resist. He wrapped a spare foot cover over the tip of his cane, and followed them up.

The room above was derelict and ill used, containing dusty and cobwebbed shelves, moth eaten drapes over grimy windows, gritty floorboards and little else. The eye was drawn to two things instantly; the grisly, red-brownish, crude letters spelling RACHE across one wall and the dead body.

Some deaths looked peaceful; even when the end itself had been violent, the visage of the deceased could still be serene – untroubled at last. This was not one of those. The victim, past middle age, lay in a knotted contortion of pain in the upstairs sitting room, lying on one side, limbs convulsed and face twisted in agony. It was impossible to tell whether he was handsome or not; he certainly wasn't handsome enough to mitigate the throes of death. Whoever he was, he was probably a lot happier wherever he had gone, than being inside his tortured mortal shell.

Ignoring the other techs and officers in the room, they knelt by the body; in Watson's case it was more of a knee dropped crouch. His brace was a slightly more metallic version of a medial unloading brace, which at least gave him some use of his knee joint, if a stiff one.

Stamford did all the standard things – checked pulse, took a liver temperature – while Watson took note of the surroundings while he slipped on his gloves. There was blood spatter all around the body but no pooling, which indicated a mortal wound but also that the body had been moved. Watson frowned at the remains; from the blood settling he could see at the back of the neck it didn't look like he'd been moved. It looked like he'd died where he'd dropped. Appearances could be deceiving, though.

"Hmm, liver temp is about thirty degrees," Stamford reported.

"Combine that with pallor, lividity and," Watson gently attempted to manipulate one thrown out limb. "Rigor mortis starting to set in, this happened five to seven hours ago," Watson checked his watch. "It's seven thirty now, so time of death between, let's say, between midnight and two."

"The usual hour for sordid crime," Stamford commented.

Watson checked under the eyelids. "Bloodshot, not haemorrhaged. Judging by the smell on his lips, he might have been drinking." Or crying, Watson told himself, looking at the salt crusted lids. But that could have happened involuntarily while he died. It certainly hadn't been a quick death. "He's dressed for a night out." He added, indicating the formal suit the victim wore.

Stamford was packing up the temperature probe when he suddenly reached inside the man's shirt to a hidden pocket on the inner side for valuables. "Passport," he called out.

"Bloody hell, so much for hope," Lestrade swore, coming forward with an evidence bag and directing the booklet in open to the ID page. "Drebber, Enoch J. Late of Salt Lake City, Utah." He held up the photo ID to Gregson, and the two squinted from it to the victim.

"Hard to tell from the death mask," Gregson sighed. "But it looks be our man. I'll give the consulate a call, see if we can't get dentals. Damn it, I was hoping the card we found on the stoop was just coincidence."

"Really, Inspector. By now you should know there is no such creature," a sardonic voice drifted in from the doorway. Watson looked up in surprise.

Coming into the room was a tall, spare, scarecrow of a man, dark haired and pale faced in a way that suggested he didn't see much sunlight. He dressed neatly but negligently in a suit, and strode into the scene with a brisk, wiry energy that radiated from the grey of his eyes and from the sheer power of his movement. He had a presence, Watson could feel it immediately. He was a personality that filled the room from edge to edge.

The two detectives in the room looked undecided on whether the newcomer was welcome or not. They certainly didn't look entirely happy.

"And while I am instructing you on proper investigative attitudes," the newcomer continued with acid arrogance, "You might want to have some of your people go down to make casts of the footprints in the dried puddle that was the dead grass bed at the end of street, that is assuming no one has yet clod hopped all over them. They show killer and victim both. I've marked them, but since every other print has been obliterated by your department's overeager trampling I can't guarantee their continued survival."

Gregson cursed. "I'll see to it, assuming they are what you say. Are you certain?"

Lestrade winced.

The wiry man gave an offended snort. "Please don't confuse my methods with your textbook spouting technicians, Inspector. Your people pulled straight up to the door and stampeded in, everyone coming after you parking further down the street as they came, obliterating anything useful on the laneway, but luckily for you the killer and the victim came here in a taxi, an older model from an independent company, I'd say, that suffered a flat quite recently given the fact that it's using it's spare tyre on the road. I've marked those tracks too. They started from the end of the lane and walked from there, since this alley is a dead end and the taxi wouldn't come up here. The prints are quite fresh. Look at the boots of the dead man, the mud therein is quite distinctive, wouldn't you say? Now that I've finished explaining your job to you, would you please..." he waved a sarcastic hand at the door.

Gregson hurried out, either eager to save evidence or get out with some dignity intact. The newcomer made a face at the broad retreating back before whirling on Lestrade. The two began a quiet conversation wherein Lestrade held up the passport for inspection.

"Who is that?" Watson asked surreptitiously to Stamford while the others were engaged. Holmes took a magnifying glass from his pocket and gave the bloody slogan on the wall a quick glance that was over in less than three seconds. "Another detective?"

Stamford gave a rueful grimace. "You know the man I was talking about needing accommodation?" He nodded in the newcomer's direction.

Watson's eyebrows rose. "That's him?" he asked, while Stamford nodded. "Well, he's certainly a clear thinker at least."

"If you value your continued sanity, don't tell him that," Stamford warned half jokingly, opening up his full kit. He braced a hand at the victim's shoulder, preparing to turn him over.

"If you value my sanity, Stamford, I will thank you not to disturb the integrity of my scene," a sardonic rejoinder drifted down from on high. Watson was startled. The man had moved like a cat.

"Sorry, Holmes," Stamford replied, grinning. He didn't seem at all fazed by the man's overbearing tone. "I didn't realize you'd come to claim another one." He gestured to Watson. "I'd like you to meet Dr John Watson..."

"Your replacement. I did warn you that living in the foundry district would be detrimental to your wife's health."

"Yes, you did," Stamford sighed ruefully. "Watson, I'd like you to meet my acquaintance, Mr Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock, seriously? was Watson's first thought. He felt the sharp grey eyes give him a lightning quick dissection, shorter but more penetrating than the detectives had given him downstairs. Holmes raised a sharp eyebrow. "You've been in Afghanistan, I perceive."

Watson blinked. "Where did you hear that, Mr Holmes?"

A look of amusement briefly passed across the other man's face. "I see more than I hear. Now then, let us see what we have..."

The extraordinary man then proceeded to crouch down and do an inch by inch examination of the body and it's surrounds with a lightning energy; brief periods of stillness followed by sharp strikes of movement. Watson sat back and looked to the others in the room, waiting for someone to restore protocol, but no one did. Watson was nonplussed. He felt there was an act going on in front of him, and he hadn't been given his script.

Holmes looked up with a strange look. "I am dissatisfied. I am extremely dissatisfied." He cast his grey eyes around the room, searching feverishly for something. "Too much is missing here."

Holmes made a violent motion and overturned the body, to which Watson was forced to move. They had not finished as yet. "Sir, can you please unhand the patient? The medicos have got the finish the job before anyone else can take a look." He reached across the body to grab Holmes by the wrist, arresting his movement.

"There's too much missing here, doctor," Holmes looked at the iron hand gripping him, and then back to Watson's face in a condescending manner that would set teeth on edge if it hadn't been perfectly clear he didn't know he was doing it. "Too much. I'd like to salvage something before everything is lost to inexcusable bumbling."

Watson raised an eyebrow in challenge. "So would I, sir. It seems strange, then, that you would work at cross purposes to me."

Holmes seemed irreverently amused by the interference. "And why not? You unwittingly cross purposed me first. I spent ten minutes trying to puzzle out the presence of a man with a cane and a limp; I made a minor but understandable assumption that this was an unknown party, as I know the foot marks of all the usual lab rats from having to eliminate their various missteps on every scene I visit. Of course, the obvious solution was Stamford's unenviable replacement. A gross error, I admit; as much my fault as anyone's."

"My heartfelt apologies," was Watson's dry retort. The man's arrogance was overwhelming but strangely inoffensive, as it was completely undirected. It was clearly the man's standard operating procedure with everyone he dealt with and therefore inspired no rankling in the stoic ex-army surgeon, who had been on the end of too many malicious and personal superior officers mannerisms. "Allow me to settle my debt; tell me what you are looking for, and I will help you find it; you need not sully your hands." He gave the man a wide, sharp grin which advertised he knew damn well that man liked hands-on work.

Holmes was genuinely taken aback for a moment. He passed another penetrating look across Watson, and then let out a startled bark of laughter, a quicksilver smile briefly flashing past his face. "Very well. How am I to refuse? I am looking for signs of the poison used to kill him."

"Poison?" Lestrade blurted from where he watched the confrontation with fascination. Gregson had returned sometime in the interim, and was watching the spectacle with an open mouth.

Holmes rolled his expressive eyes, and shot Watson a 'see-what-I-have-to-put-up-with?' look. After months of well meaning people stifling his attempts to rebuild his life by treating him like a helpless invalid, Watson found, much to his surprise, he had a spurt of fellow feeling with the eccentric Holmes.

"Yes, Lestrade, poison. Do engage your brain, there's a chap," Holmes replied caustically.

"With all this blood?" Stamford spoke incredulously.

Holmes rounded on him, but Watson quickly spoke up before the verbal flaying could start. "No blood pool, though; there's blood all around, but if it came from him he'd had to have been moved from somewhere else."

Holmes sent him another one of those inscrutable looks. "Very good Watson."

Alright, maybe that did rankle a little. The man did carry the kind of tone used when a pet did a clever trick. Watson glared at Holmes, but the man wasn't paying him any mind.

"The blood is, in fact, the killer's," Holmes continued airily. "A tall American man with small feet for his height, used to being outdoors, mid thirties, fit and very strong, smokes Five Star cigars and keeps frugal habits. He probably dresses down market, and has a florid complexion, and badly trimmed nails."

"What?" Watson was shocked. The man had barely gotten here. The man in question simply shot him a smug smile. Lestrade merely wrote it all down. "How could you possibly...?"

"Ah!" Holmes held up a hand for silence as his eyes fixed on something. His long, thin hands darted into Watson's field kit and withdrew a pair of long tweezers, expertly ferreting them beneath the dead man's shoulder. He pulled out a small circlet of gold.

"A wedding ring?" Watson peered at the tiny piece.

"More to the point, a woman's wedding ring!" Lestrade eyes lit up. "A crime of passion, perhaps. Men fighting over a woman." He looked at the wall. "Maybe he intended to write her name; Rachel. He might have been interrupted. A constable did find the body. He could have been scared off."

"The men come here, start fighting, one loses and the other escapes only injured, perhaps too injured to do anything more physically; hence, poison." Gregson summarised, looking around.

Holmes gave a long suffering sigh. "All very engaging, gentlemen, if totally incorrect. When men fight, they exchange blows," he lifted the corpse's stiffening hand with difficulty. "This is not the hand of someone who violently defended his life."

Watson had to agree on that observation. There was no bruising or splitting of the knuckles, nor any matter under the man's ill-kept nails which might have indicated he scratched his attacker.

"Then Drebber was surprised, or blitzed," Gregson persisted.

"Lord save me from lack-logic fools!" Holmes exclaimed with fervour. "There are no marks on the body, gentlemen. No marks, which means no physical violence, I believe."

"If there was no fight and no weapons present, then why is the killer's blood everywhere?" Gregson challenged, nettled.

"The simplest explanation. Once you remove physical violence from the equation, then you are left with merely physiological condition. What's the most likely place to bleed without wounds? The nose. He had a nose bleed. I'm sure tests will confirm the presence of mucus in the blood." Holmes bagged the ring efficiently and threw it at Lestrade.

Watson was continuing the examination of the corpse, while still keeping a close ear of the back and forth going on in the room. For the first time, this job seemed genuinely fascinating. And that was a positive.

"There may not be violence," Watson spoke, not realizing at first he had spoken aloud. "But there is..." he prised the dead man's jaw open. Rigor was definitely setting in. "Hand me a swab, will you?"

He meant Stamford, but it was Holmes who handed him the long swab from the kit. Watson inserted it into the darkness of the mouth, and scraped it across the back of the deceased throat. He withdrew a swab stained a reddish pink.

"There's blood in his throat?" Stamford asked, handing a vial to seal the swab in. "He swallowed something caustic?"

Holmes and Watson both exchanged a glance. "Not, I think," Holmes spoke from their wordless agreement. "From the state of his tongue. It's not irritated or blistered in any way."

"But the blood is discoloured," Watson added, turning the pinkish swab over in the vial. "The blood cells have broken down into plasma...blood into plasma..." He looked at Holmes. "If I was to take a stab - sorry, no pun intended - I'd say a hemotoxin."

"A hemotoxin?" Lestrade broke in. He had crouched on his heels near them, watching with interest. The rest of the room wasn't even pretending to work anymore. "What is a hemotoxin?"

"An agent commonly found in venom and most common in snakes of the solenoglyphous variety which is rattlesnakes and pit vipers; it breaks down the blood and blood vessel linings and causes blood to seep into the tissues of the body," Holmes reported efficiently. "Other typical effects are muscle cramps and spasms, convulsions, nervous system depression, which is of course paralysis, cardiac and respiratory arrest. Not the most powerful toxin the animal kingdom has to offer, nor the quickest death. Prey is often run to ground after being bitten, instead of dying instantly." The saturnine features of Holmes face turned a look over the contorted body. "An interesting choice of murder weapons."

"Cruel, certainly," Watson muttered. The morgue drivers were hovering outside the door, with a body bag and a stretcher.

Stamford grimaced. "I'll go with the van. Watson, can you drive back to pathology? See if you can raise Nokey; he's the poisons expert." Stamford ignored Holmes's derisive snort, stripping off a glove so he could hand Watson the car keys.

"Well, I suppose I am of no more use here," Holmes rose to his feet. "If you need my help further, and I'm certain you will, you know where to contact me. Oh, and by the way, Lestrade, you may be a dedicated flatfoot but you, sir, are certainly no student of languages. Rache is German for revenge; I would not waste my time looking for the illusive Miss Rachel, if I were you."

He delivered the Parthian shot over his shoulder as he strode out.

Watson stared after him.

"See, I did warn you," Stamford murmured lowly. "An absolute nut."

Watson smiled ruefully. "Perhaps, but a very clever one."

"And he never lets us forget it," Lestrade growled, arms folded tensely as he glared the various people back to work. He turned dark eyes on Watson. "John Watson, was it? I shall watch your career with great interest. Any man who can match salvo's with Sherlock Holmes in a man worth knowing about." He shook the doctor's hand before marching out, his fellow detective giving them a nod before following.

Watson shook his head. It had certainly been an interesting day.

He was surprised by the pain as he rose. Not surprised that it was there. Surprised that, briefly, he had simply forgotten it was there.

That was a positive too.

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End Chapter Two